World War III and the Blogosphere

[unhappycamper]

World War III and the Blogosphere

Defense Tech network member Ned Conger passed this article along to us. I like it because I have great respect for the author, UPI Editor at Large Arnaud De Borchgrave, who has deep sources from both sides of the aisle.

It’s also interesting in that it loosely indicts the blogosphere, giving it more power than I think most of us will agree it deserves.

Anyhow, the scenarios are more plausible than our last glance into the crystal ball.

From UPI:

Journalism of verification in the blogosphere has been displaced by a journalism of assertion where rumors become facts and where facts are censored by omission. Hardly surprising then that 200 million Americans, two-thirds of the population, concede they don’t understand foreign policy issues. And only one-third say they understand major domestic issues. TV comedian Jay Leno's Jaywalking interviews confirm these figures. With 80 million blogs and more than 1 billion people now online, it becomes increasingly difficult to sort factoid from fact and truth from untruth.

Today, all you need to become an online know-it-all is a Web site, a blog and an attitude. Creative reporting is the new genre. And you achieve instant mass readership by turning your darkest suspicions into reality. No wonder newspapers are losing readers and advertising revenue -- and shedding domestic and foreign bureaus. Newspapers are dull next to the fantasy lucubrations dished out as hard news, or an unconfirmed front-page report next to the hard “fact” moving through the blogosphere courtesy of electronic tools that ensure mass diffusion.


Rest of article and comments are at: http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003764.html?wh=wh

[snappyturtle]

1. I don't suppose UPI has any inclination to give blogs any credence.

"Newpapers are dull next to fantasy lucubrations dished out as hard news, or an unconfirmed front-page report next to the hard "fact" moving through the blogosphere courtesy of electronic tools that ensure mass diffusion.


I certainly don't believe every newspaper I read just as I don't believe everything I read of the net. I guess this article is saying we are incapable of discerning fact from fiction and widely distribute whatever we find as fact.

(I bookmarked the article to read later. I only read what's posted here.)